How the Popularity of Short Videos Promotes Regional Endogeneity in Northwest China: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Return migration is critical to regional endogeneity, especially in rural areas. In recent years, short videos, such as those on TikTok, have become very popular in rural China, which has attracted many people to return to their hometowns and become cyber-celebrities, profiting from the production of short videos to showcase local agricultural culture. The question focused on in this paper is to what extent the popularity of short videos has influenced return migration and what role it has played in promoting regional endogeneity. We conducted a qualitative survey of cyber-celebrities in Qingyang City, one of the poorest regions in northwest China, using NVivo12 software to validate a mechanistic model linking the popularity of short videos and return migration, and further explored the positive implications of reviving local agricultural culture through new technologies for regional endogeneity. The results show that (1) the popularity of short videos has a positive impact on return migration, (2) technical and financial support from local communities has a positive effect on the popularity of short videos, and (3) emotional strategies and local knowledge are key factors for the popularity of short videos. This study could help local communities build more competitive strategies while helping cyber-celebrities produce more communicative works to showcase local agricultural culture. The popularity of short videos is believed to have a positive impact on the preservation of regional agricultural heritage.

1. Introduction

In the 1980s, with the policy of reform and opening up, Chinese rural enterprises proliferated nationwide, and the environmental pressure on rural areas increased dramatically, and thus followed environmental pollution and overexploitation of natural resources. On the other hand, along with urbanization, a large number of laborers shifted from rural areas to urban cities. This has made the labor shortage in rural areas very serious. Before the 21st century, the focus of national development was concentrated on China’s urban areas, resulting in the rapid deterioration of environmental conditions in rural areas. Looking back to the dramatic degradation of environmental quality and development in many rural areas in the 1990s, the formation and evolution of many rural development problems are found to be distinctly exogenous, not primarily driven by internal social dynamics, but closely related to the changes in social conditions beyond the countryside, such as the loss of labor and the spread of urban pollution.

A previous study mentioned that rural development was basically practice without theory [1]. Rural development is not only based on natural resources but also on social factors, such as new interlinking mechanisms, new forms of governance and the resulting changes of social relations [2]. The natural and the cultural features of the country are being combined and reshaped, not just in China but in other regions of the world such as Europe and Latin America, where countries are facing many rural development dilemmas. In this context, how to activate endogenous development processes in rural areas has become a worldwide problem.

From the perspective of genesis, the development or evolution of objects is often accomplished under the joint action of exogenous and endogenous dynamics. “Endogenous” is a way of change that grows out of the inherent texture of objects and is an inevitable result following its own development logic. The ecological and economic development of rural areas has always been an essential problem, and the key solution is to generate and maintain regional endogeneity. Whether a region has endogenous and recyclable agricultural development depends mainly on the quantity and quality of the labor force. For more than a decade, the Chinese government has considered rural issues as the top priority of national governance. Some sociologists’ understanding of China’s rural development problems largely follows the framework of “the modernization of rural society” [3,4,5], the principal views of which can be summarized as follows: the current development problems in China’s vast rural areas are largely the result of rural society. In this way, the solution for these problems lies in the proper management of the conflict between modernity and tradition.

Although the discussion of rural problems in contemporary China cannot be separated from the background of modernization, several problems also need to be discussed:

(1)

The problems of rural development have been magnified in the explanatory framework of modernization. The development process of modernization has indeed led to risks faced by rural societies, but attributing the series of problems encountered in development, such as rural poverty, environmental pollution, gender inequality, and unequal educational resources, to the negative effects of modernization tends to create a dichotomy between development and “demodernization”.

(2)

The explanatory framework of modernization usually assumes that the endogenous, local knowledge of traditional villages gradually gives way to external knowledge in the modernization process, resulting in the lack of binding norms of action and the labeling of village residents as perpetrators of a crime and their exclusion from the power system of village governance [5,6]. Few studies have focused on the endogenous effects of returning labor on local rural development.

(3)

The view of modernity lags behind the current profound changes in the realistic foundations of rural society and theorizes inadequately the new social dynamic processes of change in the rural environment. The new era begins with the increasing rise of the networked society as a new social form on a global scale [7,8]. Networking has brought social systems closer. The state of local development is affected by “present” social dynamic processes but is also experiencing an increasing number of “absent” social dynamic processes from outside the local space [9].

The impact of the process of modernization on the countryside cannot be denied; however, rural social life is also not fractured, fragile and dependent, but also inherited, resilient and autonomous. Only by re-evaluating these qualities of rural social life and grasping the intrinsic connections among inhabitants, society, culture, environment, and economic development can we transcend the original explanatory framework of modernization and thus better understand the endogenous nature of rural environmental problems as well as more comprehensively address the problems of rural development.

Therefore, this study focuses on the return of rural labor after the epidemic and the contribution of new media to rural endogeneity. The return of rural labor is the key to solving challenges for rural development, especially in northwest China where the intergenerational break in labor force is more severe. Returning laborers, having accumulated human capital through their employment in other countries, are an important force for rural revitalization. It is of great social significance to adapt to the phenomenon of returning rural labor, to give full play to its “bridging effect” on the integrated development of urban and rural areas, and to realize its role in promoting rural development.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many young people choose to return to their hometowns from big cities to start their own businesses. Thus, short videos, with their unique charm and powerful communication capability became the main platform for their ventures. In turn, these returning laborer’s promoted the endogenous development of the countryside on multiple levels, including economically and socially. On 22 June 2021, TikTok released its first data report about rural issues: over the past year, TikTok rural videos received a total of 12.9 billion likes, and the income of rural video creators increased 15 times year-on-year. Among these video creators, 54% were young people returning to hometowns to start their own businesses, with the highest proportion of urban white-collar workers returning to their hometowns, followed by migrant workers [10]. As a result of this trend, returning laborers and their families have gained relatively stable incomes, township governments have seen some increase in GDP, and city dwellers have additional channels to learn about other regional cultures and to buy diverse products.

Short videos in rural areas have become increasingly popular, and more and more rural residents are reintegrating their way of lives as short video bloggers, posting idyllic and traditional lifestyles through short video platforms, which are very different from urban life. In the last two years since the pandemic started especially, people’s travels have been limited, so short videos have become a new mode of “online tourism” for people to learn about the outside world.

Fostering the ability to “endogenously reconstruct” rural culture is conducive to eradicating not only material and cultural poverty, but also the values of poverty. The return of rural labor force has partially strengthened the cultural confidence and self-awareness of local rural culture. “Cultural Self-Awareness” is a concept of cultural reflection proposed by famous Chinese sociologist, Fei Xiaotong, in 1997, and means that people who share the same cultural context have “self-awareness” of their culture and know the origin, formation process, characteristics and future development trend of their culture [6]. It is on the basis of cultural self-awareness and self-confidence that rural bloggers’ short video broadcasts integrate the past, present and future of local culture, thus promoting the initiative of cultural reconstruction and development.

Cultural forms derived from the practice of the subjects must be placed within a certain social structure and interact with it in an organic way in order to be welcomed by people and to fulfil certain social functions. The emergence of short video bloggers in the countryside is a bottom-up approach, spontaneously promoting the culture of their hometown, bringing goods to the countryside, and organically combining personal enrichment with rural development.

In short, this paper attempts to explore the relationship between short video trends and return migrants in rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to understand the implications of such trends for endogenous rural development, in addition to the roles played by certain socio-economic variables (local community financial support efforts, local agricultural heritage, etc.) through a combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative research cases.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Importance of Return Migration for Rural Endogeneity

In urbanization, the entry of rural labor into urban employment has been accompanied by a large number of return flows, whether in developed countries such as the United States [11], Canada [12] and Japan [13], or in developing countries such as Brazil, Mexico [14] and West Africa [15]. Return migration has played an important role in local economic development, especially for some developing countries [16].

Neoclassical economics views rural–urban migration as a pathway to development and argues that return migration is detrimental to development and exacerbates rural labor redundancy. In this case, return migration is not only a passive choice of the “losers”, but also a further “development failure” [17]. However, in recent years, scholars have tended to focus on the positive effects of return migration on regional development. Migration is a strategy to accumulate economic capital, diversify household risk, and obtain human capital enhancement. Therefore, labor force return brings both economic and human capital back to local areas [18]. It was found that having experience in urban employment significantly facilitates career changes in rural laborers upon their return, increasing their likelihood of engaging in nonfarm employment by 30–40% [19,20]. Returning labor force contributes to the diversification of local economy, resulting in stronger local entrepreneurial activity and innovation [15]. In addition to investment and technology enhancement, returning labor brings intangible impacts to the local area through the diffusion of technology and ideas [21].

Due to the overlapping effects of COVID-19, return migration in rural China will reach 11 million in 2020, 1.6 million more than previous year [22]. The government of less developed regions have made “guiding return migration” as their main policy to promote sustainable development. Some scholars point out that rural revitalization cannot be achieved without external capital, talents and other factors, but farmers themselves are the main subject of rural revitalization. Therefore, rural subjectivity should be rebuilt through farmers’ ability to cultivate the endogenous power. The economic and political resources and social security invested by external forces should also be oriented to the needs of farmers’ subjective perspectives, thus constituting a capacity building system for self-development [23,24]. In addition, rural revitalization should find its own comparative advantages, activate endogenous resources of the region, and be fully empowered with the autonomy and innovation space.

In this way, the following aspects should be included in the framework of exploring the impact of return migration on endogenous development for local communities: (1) the full utilization of local advantageous resources; (2) support and assistance of external factors for local development without any exclusion, and the establishment of extensive links between internal and external markets; (3) extensive participation and benefits of rural residents; (4) the collective identity of community members; (5) sustainable livelihood in the process of endogenous development; and (6) unique culture and traditions preserved and inherited.

2.2. Research on the Relationship between Popularity of Short Videos and Revival of Agricultural Culture in Rural China

With the development of communicative media, especially in the past two years under COVID-19, short videos have become a popular way to socialize with each other due to strict social isolation. According to the 48th Statistical Report on the Development Status of China’s Internet Network, released by China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) in June 2021, the number of online video (including short video) users in China reached 944 million, an increase of 17.07 million from December 2020, which is 93.4% of all Internet users. Among them, the number of short video users is 888 million, an increase of 14.4 million from December 2020, and 87.8% of all Internet users [25].

In the social media era, the popularity of short videos has created a video-based way of life, which is not only the mediation of daily life, but also the mediated daily life. Short videos contain a kind of social creativity and reshaping ability, as well as the infrastructure for the generation of social and cultural publicness, constructing an “unconventional database” of our daily life. Based on a survey upon rural users, some scholars point out that short videos are immersed in the daily life of rural areas, such as exhibiting rural life or producing agricultural goods to revitalize rural industries [26]. Young people who choose to return to their hometown become social media users and actors through short video media practices. In this process, rural development is placed in a dynamic, interconnected and shared open perspective, and the communication of its rural landscape is deeply rooted in the countryside and empowered by short videos.

The “2021 Kuaishou Sannong (“Sannong” refers to agriculture, rural areas and farmers) Ecology Report” recently released by Kuaishou Technology, one of China’s largest short video platforms, shows that more than 240 million users expressed their interest in rural areas in 2021, with a growth rate of more than 60%, and the number of new original works about agricultural issues exceeded 200 million [27]. Another short video giant platform, TikTok, also released the “2021 Sannong Data Report”, showing that the income of rural video creators increased by 15 times compared to 2020 [28]. This phenomenal growth rate has made rural residents, previously regarded as the “disadvantaged groups of the digital age”, the primary creators for short video platforms. As scholars emphasize, farmers themselves are the subjects of rural revitalization, but they have long been neglected [29]. The popularity of rural short videos shows the great potential of rural youth who are skilled in using media technology in promoting their hometown culture. The best proof of this is that short video celebrities such as “Li Ziqi” and “Zhang Tongxue” have tens of millions of followers. This is attractive to young people who grow up in rural areas but receive a good education in cities.

Meanwhile, the media logic carried by short videos also has a great impact on the revival of intangible cultural heritage in rural areas. Marshall McLuhan proposed the “quadratic theory” of media evolution, pointing out that each media has four functions: enhancement, obsolescence, reproduction and reversal [30]. “Retrieval” means that the media reproduces what is outdated. Rural short videos show the real scenes of agricultural culture and convey the image of new farmers with vividness, diversity and individuality. Rural space thus gradually enters public communication. A large number of intangible cultural heritages and local dialects, such as folk arts and traditional skills, having long been extinct, have been recreated and revived through these short videos.

2.3. Rural Media Practice and Youth Culture

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to researching the lives of young people in rural areas [31,32,33]. There are also debates which have been thrown into focus where research has concentrated on the ways to tell their stories [34,35]. Comparing the context of urban and rural, more than geographic or demographic definitions, we would like to observe this from a cultural perspective [36]. When we dicusss the culture of rurality, it has often been represented by the outside. However, with the development of self-media (or We media), short videos have become a way for rural youth to communicate with the outside world and express their local culture [37,38].

Short videos combine text, voice and images in a short and concise mode, displaying information in a visual and three-dimensional way, and presenting content in its “original” form [39], which is a perfect match for the communication characteristics of the Self-Media Era. This approach is particularly sought after by young people, and there are many types of influencers in both rural and urban areas, such as those for food, entertainment, talent and beauty. The number of internet celebrities in China has exceeded one million [40]. Social media culture has become a part of youth culture. Through dynamic and visual videos, audiences are able to view the full picture without deciphering the text to maximize the use of fragmented time.

Current research has carried out descriptive analysis on rural online influencers and some phenomena such as the increase in returning labor after the epidemic [41,42]. However, few studies have linked such trends to the development of rural endogeneity and explored them at a more in-depth theoretical and practical level. In fact, in the interaction between culture and society; the endogeneity of rural culture, is distilled from cultural traditions by returning rural youth through short video platforms, allowing us to understand the discourse and the ideas and culture of the farmers themselves, rather than the image constructed by urban elites in modern media. Activating rural cultural resources and vitality from within rural society meets the emotional and economic needs of rural families and contributes to the economic development and social stability of the government and the country.

2.4. Research Gap in Previous Study

A clear research gap exists between the popularity phenomenon of short videos in rural areas and the return of the rural labor force, which reflects the positive significance of new media represented by short videos for sustainable development and endogenous maintenance in rural areas. From the above literature review, it is clear that the popularity of short videos in rural areas has attracted much attention from scholars, and the related studies have been extensive and fruitful. However, few studies have correlated these two highly representative phenomena to explore the possible utility of new media for sustainable rural development. The rapid development of new technologies, represented by social media in the last decade, has posed many challenges to traditional issues. Rather than considering the popularity of short videos in rural areas as a simple cultural phenomenon, it is necessary to understand the extent of such artistic creations, which originate from real life but have traditional values, their positive effect on the endogenous and sustainable development of rural areas and how they have re-energized the development of rural communities. Meanwhile, it is important to reveal the potential impact of this boom in artistic creation as a result of technological change on the revitalization of agricultural culture, including the preservation of agricultural heritage.

3. Date and Methods

This article examines how the popularity of short videos affects the decision of return migration and its impact on the cultural identity and the creativity of the returning workforce. It employs a qualitative research design because this helps to explore contextual conditions and realizes the phenomenon in a broader sense to enable understanding and critical analysis. In addition, researchers have employed theories from the sociology of nostalgia to help describe and explain living experiences from participants’ perspectives. The following sections describe the theory, the sample and sampling procedures, as well as the methods of data collection and analysis.

3.1. Theory

Although studies have shown that returning labor does have a positive impact on local agricultural economy, they have lacked a theoretical explanatory framework. In order to gain insight into the role of returning labor in promoting rural development, and the important and rapid channels that short-form video platforms provide for the external dissemination of rural products, culture and traditions, it is required to analyze the source material and social-emotional mechanism behind it. Therefore, we choose the sociological theory of nostalgia as the basic theory and take short video owners, who mainly introduce farming culture and products of Qingyang City after returning to their hometowns, as the research object. We tried to construct and verify the mechanism model between the popularity of short videos of agricultural culture and return migration force and analyze the emotional support and theoretical paradigm behind it.

Nostalgia is a particular psychological phenomenon and aesthetic act. The sociological study of nostalgia can be traced back to Fred Davis’ Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia (1976). Davis defines nostalgia as “a longing for the past”, a definition that has also been used by other scholars on nostalgia [43,44,45]. His study of nostalgia makes it possible to speak of nostalgia not as a mental disorder or a psychological feeling of the individual, but as a social phenomenon. Nostalgia as a sociological concept mainly has two aspects: on the one hand, it is a personal sense of loss, stemming from a longing for an idealized past; on the other hand, nostalgia also refers to a public, dominant version of a certain historical period, a particular version of the past [46]. Nostalgia is thus simultaneously a personal, social, cultural and discursive construction.

In our case, Qingyang City is located in a channel on the middle stretches of the Yellow River on the Loess Plateau. It is one of the locations where Chinese agriculture developed and the ancestor of the Zhou dynasty, Bu Zhu, initiated the beginning of agriculture. The Zhouzuling (“Zhou Ancestor Tomb”) Forest Park comprises the Zhou Ancestral Culture Scenic Area and the Agriculture Cultural Experience Park. Qingyang is also the home of Huanjiang Pterosaur, Yellow River Stegodon, and China’s first paleolithic excavation site. Fred Davis discusses the relationship between nostalgia and identity. For example, the continuity of identity means nostalgia fosters a gesture of appreciation for our previous self and silences negative aspects of the past. Alternatively, it can be used as the establishment of benchmarks in groups [47]. Shared memories of farming culture and nostalgia lead to a collective cultural identity for the people of Qingyang. This is why returning workers have mainly chosen to disseminate culture and promote agricultural products after they returned to their hometowns.

3.2. Data Collection

It is impossible to be comprehensive in the selection of interview samples, but we try to be diverse in selecting interviewees. One of our authors is from Qingyang, which facilitates our data collection and the contact with interviewees, all of whom meet following criteria: (1) between 20 and 35 years old; (2) returning laborers after the epidemic (2020.1); (3) having at least 20,000 followers; (4) updating at least 2 videos per week; and (5) enjoying economic benefits by short videos. The research team initially proposed to do interviews with 20 internet celebrities, but only 17 eventually agreed to be interviewed (see

Table 1. The information of influencers in Qingyang.

Interviewee	Gender	Age	Education	Marital Status	Full Time/Part Time	Number of Followers (Thousand)
Jiang	Male	21	High School	Single	Full time	28
Wang	Male	26	College	Married	Full time	21
Zhao	Male	28	Bachelor Degree	Married	Part time	26
Liu F	Female	32	Master Degree	Married	Full time	122
Zhang G	Female	25	College	Single	Part time	28
Cheng	Male	30	Master Degree	Divorced	Full time	39
Xu	Female	29	Bachelor Degree	Married	Full time	29
Chen	Male	29	Bachelor Degree	Single	Full time	86
Liu J	Male	33	Doctoral Degree	Married	Part time	20
Sheng	Female	24	College	Single	Full time	37
Niu	Male	35	Bachelor Degree	Married	Full time	84
Bai	Male	22	High School	Single	Full time	28
Zhang K	Male	20	High School	Single	Full time	20
Jia	Male	26	Bachelor Degree	Single	Part time	21
Fang	Female	20	High School	Single	Full time	22
Yang	Male	29	Master Degree	Married	Full time	46
Sun	Male	27	Bachelor Degree	Divorced	Full time	51

). We informed them of the purpose and significance of the survey, obtained their consent and conducted in-depth interviews with them.

The data was collected by using a semi-structured interview guide. Interviews were conducted via telephone conversations, visual telephone (Zoom) and face-to-face. The online interviews were conducted between September and November 2021. One of the authors returned to Qingyang in December 2021 for a month-long offline interview to take an in-depth look at the lives of short video bloggers, video production, posting effectiveness and profit models. In addition, the research team also conducted semi-structured interviews with five local government officials to observe the endogenous mechanism of labor force return to the local economy by looking beyond the returning labor force in terms of policy support, dissemination effects and endogenous rural development. Ultimately, our interviews resulted in 34 h of audio material which was transcribed into text and used as our principal material. Additional material for our research included five videos with the highest number of likes for each of the 17 influencers, with a total of 85 short videos of material. The information of influencers is shown in Table 1. Five officials are from the Ecology and Environment Tourism Bureau, Statistics Bureau, Audit Bureau, Ethnic and Religious Committee and Culture, Sports, Radio, Film and Television Administration Bureau of Qingyang Municipal Government. Their specific information is not listed as the interviewees requested that their information be kept confidential.

3.3. Data Analysis and Model Building

Open coding refers to the process of repeatedly comparing keywords that appear several times in the source material of an interview at the initial stage of analysis, conceptualizing them over and over again, and grouping them into corresponding classes according to a certain clustering logic and, thus, forming initial categories [48]. We randomly selected 3/4 of original materials and imported them into NVivo12 software, including 13 interviews with returning laborers and their related stakeholders and 4 official data on returning laborers, making a total of 17 materials. In total, 31 initial concepts were extracted after repeated comparisons and merging semantic similarities. On this basis, these concepts were further categorized into 11 initial categories, including policy support, agricultural resources, regional characteristics, emotional resonance, cultural identity, platform support, common prosperity, family raising, brand certification, social responsibility, and future confidence. The main axial coding refers to the process of organizing relatively independent and scattered initial categories extracted during the open coding stage according to a certain internal logic and merging them to form the main categories. We reintegrated 11 initial categories according to their cause–effect relationship and temporal development to obtain four main categories, including resource support, regional culture, emotional belonging and future development. The intrinsic connections between main categories and initial categories are shown in

Table 2. Analysis of axial coding for return migration.

Main Category	Initial Category	Connotation of the Relationship
Resource support	Policy support Agricultural resources Platform support	Policy support from national and local governments combined with Qingyang’s own internal agricultural and cultural resources, as well as the multi-channel promotion and support of live streaming platforms triggered elements of resource support for the return of migrant labor.
Regional culture	Regional characteristics Cultural identity Brand certification	The distinctive regional culture, cultural identity and brand effect provide business opportunities and support for the return of labor.
Emotional belonging	Emotional resonance Raise a family	Traditional Chinese culture emphasizes filial piety. The emotional support of family and hometown is the eternal centripetal force for the return of labor.
Future development	Common prosperity Social responsibility Future confidence	The return to their hometowns is both a social responsibility and a confidence in their future development and common prosperity.

.

To ensure the reliability of the study’s findings, we imported the remaining five materials (17 interviews of influencers and five of officials for a total of 22 materials, 17 of which were previously used for testing) and data into NVivo12 for category condensation, and found no new concepts or categories emerging, indicating that the theoretical model had reached saturation.

Short video platforms have provided technological resources for diversified dissemination of agricultural culture and more employment opportunities for returning laborers. Subsequently, the return of elite migrants serves as a model for the rest. Local communities also provide returning laborers with economic and technological resources, cultural influence and opportunities for future development, but the internal drive is a combination of economic factors, cultural identity and feelings of nostalgia. This mechanism has attracted an increasing number of elite laborers and others to return.

4. Findings and Discussion

Attracting migrant laborers to return to the countryside through the popular phenomenon of rural short videos is not accomplished in one stroke, but is a continuous, dynamic and a multifaceted process of systematic change. Whether rural communities can generate enough attraction at the initial stage to induce a small group of elite laborers with strong capital accumulation and local sentiment to return first and exert their model effect to attract more laborers to return, is the complete process of attracting laborers to return by the phenomenon of rural short videos. We will explain the deep logical relationship between the main categories and core categories involved in the process of labor force return through the living preservation of agricultural cultural heritage at different stages of development with case and interview data.

The following are our conclusions based on the interview content. The interview questions revolve around: (1) reasons for returning home; (2) popularity of short videos; (3) what support local government offers; (4) economic benefits, family income, etc.; (5) family life and emotional needs; (6) short video formats, contents, topics, popularity, etc.; (7) financial and technical support; (8) why choose hometown’s agricultural culture as the theme; (9) what is the meaning of this job; (10) and what difficulties you encountered or what opinions you have, etc. We conducted semi-open-ended interviews, and did not draw up a special interview questionnaire, instead using just ten guiding questions. For the interviews with officials, we mainly focused on topics such as infrastructure construction, economic policy support, local short video broadcast situation, cultural communication effect, endogeneity and sustainability.

4.1. Infrastructure Improvement

The popularity of short videos is based on regional information infrastructure. Prior to this, especially before COVID-19, some villages in Qingyang were not connected to the Internet and a small percentage of residents used smartphones due to the lack of rural network infrastructure. The Targeted Poverty Alleviation Project that began in 2017 received great financial support from the central government and a large sum of money contributed to building networks for rural areas. By the end of 2020, every village under Qingyang City was connected to the mobile network and the cost was significantly reduced. Data shows that per capita network cost in rural areas of Qingyang City was reduced from 300 RMB (43.6 EUR )per year to 100 RMB (14.5 EUR )per year in 2020 [49]. This has greatly contributed to the popularity of smartphones. It was at this time that short video applications, represented by TikTok and Kuai Shou, began to gain much popularity among a segment of the population and quickly gained ground.

• “In the past, we didn’t have internet access here, and because of the high price of cell phones and Internet, we couldn’t afford to use them. Now the infrastructure is really improved, not only most households have the network, some public places such as libraries and parks also have public network.” (Mr. Niu)
• “When I was a teenager, it was impossible to access the Internet, and not many families in the village had computers. After graduating from high school, I worked in a factory and saved up money for two years before I bought my first smartphone. In the past two years, I can’t imagine that the government has installed internet for every household.” (Mr. Bai)

4.2. The Popularity of Short Videos

Short videos are becoming an important form of public social media, and their usage rate among teenagers in particular is rising rapidly. According to the 49th China Internet Development Statistics Report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in December 2021, China’s Internet users reached 1.032 billion, of which 934 million were short video users. Short videos have not only become a new form of national entertainment, but have also assumed more diversified roles in news, education and learning. In Qingyang City, the popularity of short videos is built on the achievements of regional information infrastructure.

• “Everyone has started using smartphones in the past few years. Because smartphones are so much better and have more functions than previous ones, everyone enjoys using them and is curious about the outside world. We can get a lot of information and understand world events even without going out of this small village. It was at this time that short videos became popular, and people had fun watching others’ works, so they slowly started to try them.” (Ms. Liu)
• “I gave my mom a new smartphone, she can’t read or write, but she can’t stop watching TikTok and Kuaishou every day.” (Mr. Jiang)
• “We used to be isolated from the outside world. What rural people like, city people do not like; what city people like, we rural people also do not understand. With short videos, suddenly the outside world started to look at our small and closed world.” (Mr. Chen)
• “All of the people I know use TikTok and Kuaishou. Why do I need my phone if I don’t watch short videos? Watching short videos makes time pass quickly. My friends and I also communicate with each other through TikTok.” (Mr. Zhang K)

4.3. The Epidemic and the Return of Hometown

The epidemic is an important influential factor affecting labor migration. Due to the epidemic, their previous jobs were affected or even lost, and it also made them start to think more about the importance of family and life besides making money.

• “I was working in a factory doing furniture processing before. Later on, when the epidemic outbroke, the factory’s economic performance was not good, and it even faced closure. My elementary school classmate Mr. Zhao was already a small internet celebrity with more than 10,000 fans. He asked me to go back and work with him, so I simply quit my job and went back to my hometown.” (Wang said)
• “When the epidemic broke out suddenly, I was working in Wuhan and It feels like the sky is falling. So, I thought what’s the meaning of higher education. It’s more important to be with my family, so I took my wife and three-year-old son back to my hometown.” (Mr. Yang)
• “I had a stable job as an IT engineer in Shenzhen, and my income was not low. The epidemic was so terrible that I almost got infected. Because my colleague was hit somehow, as his close contacts, we were also quarantined, and those 14 days were too painful. Then, I thought it was better to go back to the countryside, earning less, but the pressure of life also less, and I can take care of parents. Besides, my parents have given me pressure to get married. These days they have introduced me several girls (laughs).” (Mr. Cheng)

The drive of hometown elites also provides “role model attraction” for ordinary returning laborers and other elite laborers. When returning, elite laborers achieve economic returns and social values; other returnees will not hesitate to return home. This is especially true in a small, poor, and relatively isolated northwestern town, which is a typical model of acquaintance society. A person’s success becomes more convincing through the publicity of acquaintances.

• “I did not want to come back at first. I worked hard and got the Master’s Degree in order to get out of this remote place. However, my mother said every day that our former neighbor, Liu J, who had a PhD, had returned. I do think it is too difficult to buy a house in Shanghai where there are many masters and PhDs. I have nothing competitive, so I went back.” (Ms. Liu)
• “I was a model in Hangzhou, because of the epidemic, our company fell. Then, I opened a studio with a few friends to engage in short video live, which accumulated some fans. Then, I thought since the job is online, why I still had to rent such an expensive house in Hangzhou, so I went back to the countryside. After I came back, several people from my hometown also came back to join my studio.” (Miss Zhang G)

4.4. Government Support

As China’s urbanization process begins to slow down, the demand for labor in cities gradually begins to decrease, which means the opportunities for rural people to find employment in cities are gradually shrinking. At the same time, the Chinese government has emphasized the development of rural areas in recent years and has invested a lot of manpower and money to launch a “precise poverty alleviation” strategy, which means local government support for rural areas will be given administrative preference and administrative officials will have a greater incentive to work. In Qingyang City, for example, 1.25 billion RMB will be allocated to support rural entrepreneurship and agricultural culture promotion in 2021, a 79% increase compared to 2018 [50].

• “The government’s support is very important. Just after I returned to my hometown, the village chief asked me to talk to him, affirming that I could come back to support my hometown with such a high degree as a doctor, and also giving me a lot of policy support, which laid the foundation for my entrepreneurship.” (Mr. Liu J)

The government officials we interviewed also said that in recent years many policies related to poverty alleviation have been introduced, every aspect of which is targeted for the benefit of the people.

• “We know that it is not easy for people to live due to the epidemic, so we often ask policy support from the higher government to address some real difficulties. In the past few years, there are more poverty alleviation projects, special allocations, tax deductions and other better specific measures. We hope people can actively look for diverse ways out.” (An interviewed official)
• “We can clearly feel central government’s attention to rural work in the past few years, and especially to the fight against poverty and the preservation of rural culture.” (An official interviewed)

4.5. Technology and Financial Support

Technology and finance are the important factors that have hindered the development of rural areas. Cai points out that the most critical issue that prevents rural communities from being endogenous is the very low risk tolerance of the farmer community, which leads to their inability to choose projects that hold certain risks but have high returns [51]. The Qingyang government recognizes this problem and has launched a series of supportive policies. The townships in Qingyang have provided a large number of interest-free loans to the rural areas under their jurisdiction and mobilized a large number of skilled people to go to the countryside and train entrepreneurs and short video bloggers. This has greatly increased the confidence of people who have the idea of going home but are hesitating.

• “I see others very successful and profitable, so I also want to do short video bloggers. However, at that time, I was worried that I did not have skills and talent in this area, and I was afraid that I would not do well. The main reason why I still took courage to do it later was that our community held a special training course, and it was free of charge. I thought I had nothing to lose anyway, so I signed up to learn. After learning, I had the confidence. If I hadn’t signed up, I guess I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do it.” (Mr. Sun)
• “We don’t have much money at home, and I’m relatively young, so it’s basically impossible to start a business on my own. Before that, I worked for two years in a factory. Then, I heard banks can offer small business loans, so I loaned some money to solve my business fund and started the live stream.” (Mr. Bai)

All officials we interviewed mentioned technology promotion and financial support and said that solving problems for people is part of their job.

• “There was once a time when I was making hundreds of calls a day to people with college degrees or higher who were working in this field in Qingyang. Tell them about some entrepreneurial policies, technology promotion and financial support, to get some talents for a small city like ours. We’ve just taken off the hat of poverty, and we need talents.” (an interviewed official)

4.6. Emotional Factors

Short videos depicting rural lifestyles are popular because they meet the need for security of modern people who are in a state of mobility and change in modern society. As Zhao argues, the nostalgic impulse, such as the Freudian “life instinct” or Jung’s “collective unconscious”, has always been latent deep in the human mind, and modernity has acted as a catalyst to intensify the nostalgic demands of modern people [52]. The Enlightenment, since the 18th century, has intensified the contradiction between individual life and the overall cultural demands of society due to the one-sided promotion of reason. In its outreach, it establishes social connections around the world, and in its content, it transforms the most familiar and personal areas of our daily lives. Nostalgia is a response to and a reflection on the consequences of this modernity in the form of a sensual experience. The direction of nostalgia is multidimensional, and its basic orientation is the human connection to the good old days. We analyzed the top five videos of each of these seventeen bloggers and found that not all short videos about rural life are popular, which greatly depends on their own styles, their grasp of audience’s ideas, and their adoption of specific emotional strategies, especially the nostalgic emotions.

• “I find that viewers actually expect to see a different approach to life because people are generally feel stressed today, so they want to watch your videos to relax themselves. However, you can’t be too superficial and just play the clown to entertain people, it won’t be liked by the audience. I put a lot of emphasis on using humor to bring out the nostalgia of the audience, so that when they watch my work, they will think of their own lives or their parents’ lives in the past. Only then will the audience like it.” (Mr. Jia)
• “What makes my work successful, I think, is that it captures the collective memory of our generation’s traditional way of life. The clean sky, peaceful summer, cute animals, parents doing farm work, all these form a beautiful picture. The audience will be consciously taken into their own memories at a glance. I worked in city before and found that everyone was under a lot of pressure and had a very fond memory and imagination of the idyllic life in their leisure time.” (Ms. Liu F)

The short video works popular in Qingyang City nowadays are mainly divided into two types. One is to choose haunting scenery to convey to the audience a lifestyle that reflects freedom and tranquility; the other is to present the details of rural life to the audience in a humorous way, entertaining them by describing their dilemmas. These two styles are very different, but both require a careful emotional strategy to gain the goodwill of the audience.

• “I have a PhD in the literature, and I would feel a little frustrated to start doing short videos, what does this have to do with my major? The number of my followers is not even as high as my elementary school classmates who graduate from high school. I have a habit of writing my own poetry. Sometimes I post videos of landscapes with poems I wrote, and I find that the number of hits and favorites goes up dramatically. After that, I started making subtitles for the videos myself, sometimes with ancient poems sometimes with their own poems, and then with the scenery of our hometown, to create short videos. Of course, recently, since some of my fans know that I am a doctor, more attention is paid to topics like how to raise rural children, and I may transform into an education blogger later (laughs).” (Mr. Liu J)
• “When I first started making short videos, my husband and relatives were against it, saying how I could be a woman making funny videos in front of the public that were not dignified in their opinion. However, I enjoyed it, especially because my performances could make people happy and many of my fans regularly watch me live every day.” (Ms. Xu)

4.7. Cultural Transmission

Local governments are aware of the importance of cultural dissemination. Every year, Qingyang City holds several festivals to promote local agricultural culture and invites many famous short video bloggers to participate and communicate with local short video bloggers and share their successful experiences. This is also very advantageous to local short video bloggers in the region. Rural culture communication centered on short videos makes it possible to activate rural cultural resources and vitality within rural society and make it beneficial to social values and farmers’ emotional values.

• “At the beginning, it was really difficult. No one watched the videos that we worked so hard to make. Then, our county held this agricultural culture exhibition, invited many successful netizens, and organized exchanges between them and us. After the exchange, I realized that it is not easy to make short videos like this, and there are many skills.” (Mr. Jiang)
• “My work mainly presents the oldest way of agricultural production we have here, because it is our most valuable cultural heritage. Its uniqueness lies in the fusion of agricultural production and artistic aesthetics. For example, our unique rituals here are intangible cultural heritage. When the viewers watching it, they learn about the rich cultural knowledge and meanwhile have a very beautiful spiritual enjoyment. That’s why live streaming is a very important form of cultural transmission.” (Mr. Wang)

In addition, local knowledge is also a critical factor for the success of short video works. Qingyang has the oldest agricultural cultural heritage in China, which dates back to 4000 years ago. This unique cultural and historical heritage has become a source of inspiration for Qingyang’s short video bloggers and made their works more popular.

• “It’s important to use the language of the camera. We are the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, so it’s important for us to understand the culture of this place to make live broadcasts with local characteristics.” (Miss Fang)

Some interviewees with less education experienced some difficulties in cultural communication. They hope the local government will provide a series of training courses to improve their communication skills.

• “I didn’t like to study since I was a child (laughs), so now I can only sing and tell jokes in short videos. Many fans want me to talk about the cultural characteristics of Qingyang, but I don’t know and can’t express myself. If only the government could organize relevant training, I will definitely learn well this time.” (Zhang K)

4.8. Economic Benefits and Endogenetic Drive

From the perspective of endogeneity, we need to analyze the economic element, circular interaction and sustainability of short videos. The endogeneity of rural culture can be extracted from cultural traditions and local knowledge, and this endogeneity is demonstrated by the relatively high economic benefits and the increasing number of laborers joining the industry, not least of which attracts a large number of laborers to return to their hometowns. This endogenous cultural practice responds to the discourse and needs of farmers as main actors, and its economic efficiency is important for the recyclability of endogenous development. On the other hand, new technologies have high requirements for infrastructure development, and once these requirements are met, rural communities themselves will give rise to many endogenous changes and developments. As Wu points out, the endogenous dynamics of rural areas have long been underestimated because resources and information have all been invested in urban construction during the urbanization process [53]. New technological medium represented by short videos can connect rural communities and build a self-looping structure of production-consumption. This has an influential role in promoting regional endogeneity.

• “I have returned to my hometown to do short videos for almost two years, and I think my income can almost support our family of three. This year I have earned about 15,000 EUR. Yes, I used to work outside to send money back every year, just a few tens of thousands, but now staying with my family makes us happier.” (Mr. Niu)
• “Sometimes more clicks can cash in on the traffic. You can bring goods; help sell agricultural products and other cultural products. These cooperation companies will also give us some pay. We feel that this live industry is dynamic, and we have confidence in the future.” (Mr. Wang)
• “Next month there are two other villagers back, a couple, also intend to live stream with me.” (Mr. Sun)

The government officials we interviewed also emphasized the range of economic benefits in Qingyang City that have been driven by short videos and said that such a phenomenon is sustainable.

• “This is not only an interest of villagers, but rather of people working as a new industry to generate revenue. According to our statistics bureau, the income of many short video bloggers account for more than eighty percent of household income. Many of them are couples.” (An interview official)
• “Our government will formulate a series of policies and try our best to help the cultural industry of Qingyang City develop well.” (An interview official)

The above interviews meet the criteria of the 11 important initial categories and connote the relationship between them, as stated in Table 2. To logically present the above concepts and conclude the materials of interviewees, we created the following dynamic model diagram to illustrate the relationships between the elements (see Figure 1).

Short video platforms provide technological resources for diversified dissemination of agricultural culture and offer more employment opportunities for returning laborers. Subsequently, the return of elite migrants serves as a model for the rest. Local communities also provide returning laborers with economic and technological resources, cultural influence and opportunities for future development, but the internal drive is to combine economic factors, cultural identity and nostalgia feelings. This mechanism attracts an increasing number of elite laborers and others to return. The new industry of short videos and live streaming drives the labor force to return home and promotes the development of local economy and the spread of culture, which can form a farmer-oriented, endogenous practice of rural culture.

5. Conclusions

This study explores the impact of the popularity of short videos and return migration on endogeneity in rural areas after the epidemic by qualitative research in the form of interviews. The return of rural labor has a positive effect on the study of rural endogeneity, and the popularity of short videos enables returning laborers to engage in non-agricultural production-oriented live streaming, which offers a diversified cultural communication and a selling platform that brings economic benefits and positive social impacts to individuals, families, regions, local governments, and society. In terms of factors affecting the return of labor, apart from economic factors, technological, cultural, and emotional factors also influence this phenomenon, which in turn affects the endogenous development of rural areas, especially the sustainable dissemination and rural cultural development.

Additionally, we would like to emphasize the importance of local knowledge and cultural resources for the endogeneity of rural areas. Cultural resources and identity in short videos can reactivate the endogenous dynamics of regional agricultural culture and play a positive role in economic development and the preservation of agricultural cultural heritage. Although numerous studies have been carried out in this area, more are needed on its potential in the context of new media represented by short videos.

The challenge arising from the interactive structure between the popularity of short videos and return migration cannot be avoided. The popularity of rural short videos has brought unprecedented economic benefits to local residents, but it lacks long-term and structural security. Its future sustainability remains questionable. It should also be pointed out that a general tendency towards over-entertainment and superficiality exhibits in cultural and aesthetic aspects of current works, which constitutes the gravest threat to short video creation as an endogenous system in the region.

This study also has some limitations. The impact of COVID-19 on China has not yet abated, and we do not yet know whether these returning laborers will be willing to stay in their localities and contribute to the economic development of their hometowns if the epidemic factor is excluded in the future. It is crucial to combine short videos with cultural development and product promotion to provide sustainable benefits to attract elite laborers and general laborers. In addition, local governments should take this return phenomenon as an opportunity to provide policies favorable to returning labor force and strengthen infrastructure construction, as well as the provision of housing, medical care, entertainment, schools and other educational resources in order to fundamentally attract the returning labor force and enhance the willingness of the local labor force to serve their hometowns. This study only makes some suggestions based on our interviews and observation practices, and the shortcomings are hoped to be supplemented by succeeding studies in a more in-depth and comprehensive manner.